Bail out

[helian]

Do hard for democracy, eh?

We could start a discussion on the enthusiastic support of the Saddam regime in Iraq by the US for many years without any angst over his non-democratic credentials. Back then he was met by senior US diplomats and supported militarily and financially by successive US administrations.

We could discuss the consequences of Saddam’s misunderstanding of the US position in regards to Kuwait resulting in war and his catastrophic defeat after Gulf War I. Consequences such as the plight of the Kurds who, after being encouraged into armed resistance by the US were then abandoned to their fate only being aided after pictures of their treatment by Iraqi soldiers and their attempted escape from Iraqi forces caused world outrage over their betrayal.

Then we could discuss the expounding of the lie of weapons of mass destruction to justify inflicting another unnecessary devastating war on Iraq.

We could then go on to chin wag about how the US drove Saddam towards Islamists despite the fact that he despised them and they him… (the enemy of my enemy is my friend).

Over the border we could discuss the US overthrow of the democratically elected Mossadeq administration and the reinstalling of the despotic Shah who choked democracy in Iran to death with the full support of the US.

We could talk about the utter naivety of attempting to construct a new state in Iraq without any regard to its powerful neighbour whose influence within the Shia community of Iraq is considerable (not surprising given Iran gave many Shi’ite Iraqis sanctuary when Iraq was enjoying its patronage by the US). When US troops finally depart, Iran and Iraq will still border each other.

We could talk about why the US seems currently unconcerned that the undemocratic North Korean regime still exists and appears to have reneged on its agreement to cease is nuclear arms program.

We could talk about why the US has not intervened in Zimbabwe, despite the brutal and destructive reign of Mugabe.

We could talk about it all, but really the process of democratization is not what drives the foreign policy of US administrations (that have happily supported all kinds of dictatorships)… What drives the foreign policy of US administrations is US interests.

To quote Lord Palmerston’s famous dictum… “Nations don’t have permanent friends, only permanent interests”.

It was clearly in US interests to provoke a war with Iraq and (foolishly) completely dismantle the state (what did they think was going to happen to senior military officers and bureaucrats left without careers, take up gardening?) and you can bet your last dollar that the US did not risk and lose the lives of thousands of its servicemen and women just to give Iraqis democracy.

[cynik]

Fuck you people are ignorant.

All of you. Frogen and his war talking faggot friends are derranged as well, but even the moderately sane folk that started this thread are demonstrating high school banter, at best.

"The bail out is socialism!"

What? Ridiculous. Total fucking idiocy.

It is clearly feudalism. Socialism gives the state control of the market in order to establish a system that governs the people according to the dictates of self appointed wise folks. Socialism is based on the premis that a few wise folks care about the mass of idiots, and do their best to make life wonderful for them buy controlling the property rights that constitute the fabric of the market.

What the bailout does, by stark contrast, is allow those who profit from a free market to retain power over those who suffer in a free market WHEN THE MARKET COLLAPSES. There is no will to control the market for ideological reasons, there is simply the desire to retain power in the face of market collapse.

As such, the behaviour is properly described as feudalism. In feudal societies, lords and kings ruled by divine right, and their ideology did not take into consideration the welfare of the lower orders of humanity because these folks had their welfare managed by the church. This was because the underlying ideology of the ruling elite was not based in dialectical materialism, but in spiritual opportunism.

Socialism is firmly rooted in dialectical materialism, and for that reason it may be seen as the natural progression of rational man from a state of animal ignorance regarding the laws of the physical world.

To argue that the bail out has ideological roots in dialectical materialism is to claim that the ruling class of bankers who fund and control the economy of the global village believe in a world where what they say and desire has a relevance to the unwashed mass of idiots who scream at football games and cover their genitals when a priest walks by.

Clearly, if you take fifteen minutes to look at how bankers behave and what they say quite openly, they do not believe in this world.

Trickle down theory is clear insofar as it describes an involuntary, natural flow of material wealth from the top to the bottom. the theory is not called "flow down", or even "drip down", both of which might suggest a controlled distribution of wealth by all knowing wise men. The word trickle suggests what it means to suggest: the great unseen hand of economic growth operating without control by the elite. The rising tide that raises all ships, despite the better ideas of egomaniac theorists.

If you clowns are going to discuss these things with such airs, please put some thought into the words you employ. I refuse to believe that you guys are incapable of this sort of analyses for yourselves. You're all just fucking lazy, and you let the journalists do your thinking for you. You take their soundbites and you swap them with your "friends" like so much insipid candy.

And then you demand respect for the intellects you have so wantonly neglected for the sake of phoney friendships.

Shut the fuck up unless you have thought about it first, would be my point. At least that way, if you are irredeemably stupid, you may spare yourself the indignity of being exposed.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

certainly sounds like you cynik- if its dt he's doing a great imitation. welcome back.

[boxy]

Good to see you visiting, cynik. I seem to remember you warning us months about hedge funds and banks loaning money they didn't have

[JW Frogen]

I don’t recall that, but it could be true. Cynik predicts all doom and all gloom all the time.

That is his gag.

It goes down well with the old PA crowd.

If you predict doom and gloom long enough some doom will enter the room.

It is like being a religious prophet; chant “woe is me” long enough and some woe will row up some day.

It is easy to say what you think will go wrong, any parrot falling from a tree and meeting it's maker can do that.

Saying what we should do, and even more importantly, acting on it, thought.

By the way Cynik, just a rudimentary economic note. Socialism is the government taking control of the means of production, directly or through joint onwership, but it has nothing to do with the government insuring private sector banking, (which is occuring at present), or dialectic materialism, Marxist notions of historical inevitability, (unlike communism), it is a more pragmatic, less philosophical form of economic intervention that does not hold convictions of class inevitablity.

Trickle down theory is not a comprhensive economic theory but a prediction of outcome, nor is it really applicable to a credit crises.

And your interjection of fuedalism is just plain foolish.

What the US government is doing is Keynsianism.

You may want to read about him, he had more influence on the post WW2 economies in the democratic West than any other economist.

But then I know, after all these years, you don’t want to read about him.

Or at all.

You can just use a lot of big words and make it all up, the rubes will never know.

[JW Frogen]

Indeed rather than predict the details of this particular economic crises Cynik’s economic philosophy (if a rabid ranting about having to pay taxes and government intervention on economic activity can be dignified with the term economic thought at all) was a direct cause of the crises.

Alan Greenspan stated that his belief markets needed little or no government regulation, that self-interest would regulate them, was “misguided”.

Interestingly enough it was the Clinton Administration who deregulated and promoted Fanny Mae and Freedy Mac to make loans that traditionally would never have been made, would have been seen as too high a risk. He did so with the best of intentions to promote more home ownership of working class, lower income people and he deregulated because he too held a faith in the inherent rationality of markets.

Of all people it was Bush who tried to re-regulate the market. His administration (along with McCain) saw the writing on the bankruptcy wall, but they were block by the Democrats in Congress who said he was just being against home ownership for the working class.

Oh, and there is one more little gem in this story, Obama’s campaign housing advisor is a former CEO from one of the failed institutions, his main economic advisor, was the Clinton advisor who advocated de-regulation in the first place.

And so it goes.

Politics is a carnival.

[JW Frogen]

We could talk about it all, but really the process of democratization is not what drives the foreign policy of US administrations (that have happily supported all kinds of dictatorships)… What drives the foreign policy of US administrations is US interests.

Well as the US is a democracy with changing administrations it is not exactly possible to talk about A US policy, they will change with administrations.

It could be argued for instance Nixon chose geo-political stability and anti communism over democracy promotion (still in the belief that the collapse of communism would see democratization) where as a Truman Administration or the current Bush administration were more evangelical in their democracy promotion, declaring it as an open goal and using military power to protect or create it when combined with strategic threat.

The US has supported dictators but usually as an alternative to totalitarian or fascist empires, and as a temporary solution. As with her support of Saddam of the much greater strategic threat Iran in the 80s. (No one saw Saddam’s attack on a fellow Sunni state Kuwait coming at that time, not even the Saudis.)

One sees this during WW2 where the US gives the Soviet Union support believing, rightly, Nazi Germany was the greater immediate threat, but then withdrawing support when the greater threat has disappeared.

The same can be seen in Latin America where the US did support dictators if they opposed communist insurgency, but once the Soviet Union collapsed and stopped supporting such insurgencies the US pressured every last one to democratize.

And they all did.

Indeed the only tyranny left is the one place that the US had no influence in, Cuba.

Democracy promotion has been a critical ethos in US foreign policy post WW2.

It does not mean you can militarily intervene everywhere are that there must not be strategic threat combined, so no intervention in Zimbabwe (though the US has been the most aggressive UN power supporting the democratic process there and condemning Mugabe), there is some realism needed if the policy is to have any success. (Bush early Iraqi occupation failure being the most recent warning of this, his latter surge the most recent clarion call as to what can be achieved with realism interjected into the idealistic policy of democracy promotion.)

It is based on the assumption global democracy IS in US interests, that it promotes stability and economic progress.

No administration has been as vocal about this and risked more than the current Bush administration.

The fact they wish to promote it in the Middle East, at the heart to the ancient caliphate is, I will concede audacious. And seems to be actually working since the surge.

If it does he will go down in history far better than most see him today.

[cynik]

I did not read a word of of what you wrote, frogwit. Not this time. Not again in this life.

[helian]

If it does he will go down in history far better than most see him today.

Frayed knot. History will remember him as one of the worst.

[JW Frogen]

I did not read a word of of what you wrote, frogwit. Not this time. Not again in this life.

One more added to that ever-growing list of all the things you will never read.